Who made the Clinton administration so powerful and financially savvy? Bring them back. Give them all deputies' stars and let them take us back to the good old days.
Democratic luminaries with ties to the Obama and Clinton administrations, including two former Treasury secretaries and two former White House chiefs of staff, on Tuesday will enter the tax debate with an overhaul plan that would raise an additional $1.8 trillion in the first decade. ...NYT
The team, according to the Times:
Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, both former Treasury secretaries to Mr. Clinton; Mr. Summers was Mr. Obama’s first National Economic Council director. Others are William M. Daley, Mr. Obama’s previous chief of staff; the investment bankers Roger C. Altman, a former deputy Treasury secretary, and Antonio F. Weiss; Leslie B. Samuels, a former assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy; and Neera Tanden, a former Clinton and Obama aide who heads the Center for American Progress ..NYT
The price they'd have us pay:
limit deductions for high-income taxpayers...
all new revenue would go to debt reduction instead of using some for lower tax rates as Republicans demand...
the top tax rate for capital gains, now 15 percent, at 28 percent (Reagan level)...
dividends, also currently taxed at a maximum rate of 15 percent, taxed as ordinary income...
repeal of the alternative minimum tax and the so-called PEP and Pease limits on personal exemptions and deductions, repeal the “carried interest” break [the source of Mitt Romney's tax breaks]...
replacing popular itemized deductions for mortgage insurance and other items with an 18 percent credit so that the benefit is the same for middle-income and high-income taxpayers -- and charitable deductions would rise to 28% ...NYT
Who pays the most, then?
On average, households with less than $100,000 in annual income would see no tax increase, and those with from $100,000 to $500,000 would see small increases, the group said. Taxpayers with $1 million or more would see a 5 percent increase from their current tax liability on average. ...NYT
The most recent Republican offer seems very lame in contrast -- with a "savings" of only $800 billion compared to the CAP's plan.
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NPR has uncovered an interesting, huge tax loophole that -- most likely -- is here to stay. It's too popular with employers.
What's the largest tax break in the federal tax code?
If you said the mortgage interest deduction, you'd be wrong. The break for charitable giving? Nope. How about capital gains, or state and local taxes? No, and no.
Believe it or not, dollar for dollar, the most tax revenue the federal government forgoes every year is from not taxing the value of health insurance that employers provide their workers.
Yet most people don't even realize that they don't pay taxes on the value of those health benefits. That's too bad, says MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber, because it represents a whole lot of money.
"If we treated health insurance the same way we treat wages," says Gruber, "we would raise about $250 billion per year more." ...NPR, Morning Edition
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